Be like servants who await their master's return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. (Gospel) P Joachim Beukelaer (Flemish painter c 1534-c 1574) Kitchen Interior 1560s Reading 1: Wisdom 18:6-9 August 11, 2013 19 th Sunday in Ordinary Time The night of the passover was known beforehand to our fathers, that, with sure knowledge of the oaths in which they put their faith, they might have courage. Your people awaited the salvation of the just and the destruction of their foes. For when you punished our adversaries, in this you glorified us whom you had summoned. For in secret the holy children of the good were offering sacrifice and putting into effect with one accord the divine institution.
Responsive Psalm 33:1, 12, 18-19, 20-22 Reader: 1 Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous. All: Praise befits the upright. Reader: 12 Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord, All: the people whom he has chosen as his heritage. Reader: 18 Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, All: on those who hope in his steadfast love, Reader: 19 to deliver their soul from death, All: and to keep them alive in famine. Reader: 20 Our soul waits for the Lord; All: he is our help and shield. Reader: 21 Our heart is glad in him, All: because we trust in his holy name. Reader: 22 Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, All: even as we hope in you. Reading 2: Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19 Brothers and sisters: Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. Because of it the ancients were well attested. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith he sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise; for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is God. By faith he received power to generate, even though he was past the normal age and Sarah herself was sterile for he thought that the one who had made the promise was trustworthy. So it was that there came forth from one man, himself as good as dead, descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sands on the seashore.
All these died in faith. They did not receive what had been promised but saw it and greeted it from afar and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth, for those who speak thus show that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land from which they had come, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better homeland, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was ready to offer his only son, of whom it was said, Through Isaac descendants shall bear your name. He reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead, and he received Isaac back as a symbol. Gospel Reading: Luke 12:32-48 Jesus said to his disciples: Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them. And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming,
he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come. Then Peter said, Lord, is this parable meant for us or for everyone? And the Lord replied, Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward whom the master will put in charge of his servants to distribute the food allowance at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so. Truly, I say to you, the master will put the servant in charge of all his property. But if that servant says to himself, My master is delayed in coming, and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk, then that servant s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish the servant severely and assign him a place with the unfaithful. That servant who knew his master s will but did not make preparations nor act in accord with his will shall be beaten severely; and the servant who was ignorant of his master s will but acted in a way deserving of a severe beating shall be beaten only lightly. Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more. Homily These are very powerful readings today and we have to reread them in light of both Jesus time and our own. On one level, they may seem very strange to us and we wonder what in the world (or what in heaven s name) can they possibly mean to us today? They are quaint stories but haven t they lost their relevance? Do they have any meaning for us now? This is a longer than usual written homily but I pray it will pull together some deeper understanding for you. There are a number of directions we could go, but I will focus on a theme of living out of faith. The idea of faith has been much bandied about, and abused by those who smugly consider themselves to have a corner on the market of what it means to be faithful. And it is also abused by those who ridicule and denigrate the faithful as somehow believing in pie in the sky and out of touch with the real world. There are
errors in thinking at both ends of this continuum. Some define faithful, or having faith as a belief system, adhering to a set of doctrinal beliefs with which they identify and a particular tradition that is observed. And this approach has its merits and its place in our spiritual path, as we shall see, but it also has its limitations. I would also suggest that there is nothing whatsoever that is pie in the sky in what Jesus has to tell us, because he lived in the real world and what he had to say is still relevant. In Christ we have the freedom to think through and choose our life pathways in the light of scripture. Our biblical interpretation is informed by history and linguistics as well as today s empirical knowledge base and our experiences during lectio divina the process of meditating on and praying from scripture. We are not bound to a magisterial authority to demand that we are obligated to blindly ( on faith ) accept its interpretation. No, we are responsible to study and form our own conscience but in humility! We don t know it all! We can pray for deeper understanding. But as we shall see, when we come to the limits of our human wisdom and understanding, there is a jumping off point for faith. It is not merely a jump into irrationality as the New Atheists contend! For most of us, it is really a jump past hyperrationality, because a main barrier to faith is our tight hold on to the notion that we can and will understand everything by virtue of the power of our own intellect. Faith is not belief in a set of propositions. Faith is a process and today s readings can give us a window into that process. Jesus said, Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. What can we learn here? First of all, we are told not to be afraid. We are addressed as his little flock. Thus, we are bonded to Him and dependent on trust in his providence or as Jesus says, he is pleased to give us the kingdom. In our modern day, we should be aware of our risk for accepting substitutes in lieu of bonding to God and other intimate relationships. Such diversions will lead us down dead-end paths. We know today from a psychological standpoint that there are many common substitutes for true bonding where people get stuck an array of addictions or compulsions which we can all name. We can each identify our favorite one! This is common knowledge in our world today. But even in ancient times, this problem was recognized. Certain preoccupations were a sure sign that one had diverted from commitment to bonding, committing to the Lord and loving others. Because trust is first necessary for bonding to occur, where trust fails, people get stuck in dead-end paths. In Jesus parables, these substitutes for bonding are depicted as thieves that come in the night and rob us of our first love. And notice the conceptualizations of time. Last week, we spoke about how the rich man wasted his time, entertaining himself with make-work of tearing down perfectly good barns to build bigger ones, and this idea is again apparent in today s readings. One must watch and place one s primary trust in God, and not allow events of the moment to distract us. Those distractions include wasting our time in trivial pursuits. But note,
the disciples asked Jesus if his parable was intended for everyone or just the disciples. He answers them with yet another parable. It is instructive to compare them. He switches from a focus on the servants awaiting their Lord s return and whether they are using their time wisely and making good choices to talking about the good steward. The servant steward is explicitly responsible for feeding and nurturing others. And Jesus tells us that where we act out of ignorance, our punishment is lighter than the one who deliberately misuses the gifts s/he has been given. Perhaps the less mature disciples sometime act out of ignorance. Jesus allows for such careless errors, but the steward who has assumed a higher level of responsibility cannot appeal to ignorance so easily. And Jesus also tells us, Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more. Just as his disciples in the first century were entrusted with more responsibility for others, we have also been entrusted with so much. We are called to be watchful and ready, that is, to be alert and sensitive to our opportunities to be in one accord with God s kingdom which he has said is his good pleasure to give us. To live out his pleasure, we give up whatever will harm those who are vulnerable. Waiting for Christ to return means that while we wait, we are engaged in building social structures that respect the dignity of all humans. We are not to become waylaid and distracted from our goals by temporal distractions. In our generation, the urge to be constantly entertained can deflect us from building the kingdom. We are given a day to set aside for rest, which is important to health and well-being, but the other six days are to be considered a precious resource to be invested wisely. The achievements we aim for are greater realization of God s kingdom here and now. In the 2 nd Reading in Hebrews, we learn more about what faith is and isn t. Faith is confident assurance concerning what we hope for, and conviction about things we do not see. Fr. John Kavanaugh 1 described faith as an act of seeing in trust. He told the story of spending a month with Mother Teresa in Calcutta years ago. After Mass one morning, he met with her and she asked what she could do for him, and he requested that she pray for him to have clarity about his future. But in response, she said No. When he asked her why, she reportedly said that clarity was the last thing I was clinging to and had to let go of. In surprise, he told her that she had always seemed to him to exude clarity. She laughed and said, I have never had clarity; what I ve always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust. Sometimes we are led in faith to envision what seem to be impossibilities and yet we are called to trust in their fulfillment, if not in our own lifetimes, in the future, as we carry out our particular ministries. Sarah laughed when told she would have a child in her old age and that she and Abraham would have many descendants. I take this to mean that even on the downhill side of my life I can still give birth to new hope by 1 The Word Engaged. 8/8/10. The Center for Liturgy at Saint Louis University.
how I live my life. So another part of faith is learning to trust that God will still fulfill his plan through us even when it seems so unlikely. We can take a risk for the kingdom, even when we are as good as dead! Biblical heroes did not always live to see their hopes fulfilled in their lifetimes. Moses died and did not cross over into the Promised Land. As our reading in Hebrews tells us, they saw it and greeted it from afar. Faith, then, does not necessarily ease or end our confusion, quell our pain in this life or even turn out happily ever after. Those of us who are less than certain about the reality of the sweet bye and bye are not going to accept faith as a narcotic as its many critics of religion have suggested. No, faith does not bring any final clarity. Many died in faith, not obtaining what had been promised, but they are the very ones that give us courage to build the next stepping stones for those who follow us. In ancient thinking about time, we are in a caravan, with those in front of us who have passed on and those behind us, who look to us to lead the way. We look to the saints for our inspiration and later generations will look to us. John Pilch, a Georgetown University scholar in the ancient eastern biblical cultures, commented that the peasants in Jesus time were intensively preoccupied with the present moment and their immediate survival needs while today, Americans tend to so future-oriented that they discount the present. Thus, as we look at his parables, we can see that Jesus stressed the proper use of the moment but also anticipation of the future. Some people held to the past, and some clung to future resolutions. And this is still true today. Those whose faith is defined in the past will emphasize tradition. Those whose faith is defined in a future life will emphasize heaven beyond earth. It seems that with each new generation of believers, Jesus statements tend to be interpreted as in the past by those who hold on to tradition as the source of their identities. Or some look for socalled eschatological interpretations and are more concerned about an indeterminable future; one s actions of the present are evaluated mainly in terms of the hope of future reward. Pilch suggests that in his time, Jesus confronted the assumptions that people held about what is important by proposing an emphasis that ran counter to his culture. It is in thinking outside the box of our own culture where we may be gifted with new awareness and insight about our use of time. Reginald Fuller has suggested that we can see at work in today s passages the process of re-working of understanding across subsequent generations. For example, the author of Wisdom speaks of the salvation history of Israel and retells it in light of his own era several hundred years later. There is reference to the first Passover at the first Exodus, which the patriarchs received and passed down to us -- God s promise is carried forward in the future Exodus. And the promise of Easter builds on Exodus. Thus, the promise of Exodus foreshadowed the promise to future generations. In the communion of Saints, all generations are embraced to carry the hope forward.
Hebrews suggests that we have hope in Christ, and as we discussed in a previous homily, hope is not something where we wait passively for something to happen God s will to be revealed to us. So what is this hope? The Greek word is not a simple noun or verb, to hope. It is never used in that way. A composite word of hoping is used, to be the first to hope. Subjective hope is not ruled out here as a gift of the Holy Spirit but there is a different level of inference, hope + discernment: Paul prays that God grant the saints discernment to decide which hope among various forms of hope will be decisive for them. There is one hope, not simply inside us, but the hope of our calling, or the hope to which you have been called. (Ephesians 1:18, 4:4) It is God who calls, and calls forth to us in an act of creation and election: God elects us, and we choose to be his people. The Gospel calls us forth to be created anew, where nonbeing becomes being, not beloved becomes beloved, not shared becomes shared. Thus, in today s readings, we are called upon to become aware of the aspects of our time on earth that we each are prone to ignore or discount. We are each unique in that regard. Our first priority is our bond with God and his people, discerning which among many goals or forms of hope will be decisive for how we live our lives. Are you one who thinks that the past is more secure and a sure foundation from which we should not deviate? Perhaps you think that we must accept scripture and the understanding of it that has been passed down to us and that it is dangerous or sacrilegious to interpret in the light of our present-day understanding? Then Jesus may be calling you to become more fully aware of his ongoing creation in you and in the world which is unfolding before you this very day. He may ask you to reexamine your premises, to take into account how our spiritual forebears who gave us so much insight but to discern their core message which still holds true for our own day. We see how the early Christians shed certain Jewish practices as not essential for new gentile believers. So, too, we become responsible to respond to the Holy Spirit, to flow fluidly to live out Christ s salvation in our world today wherever that takes us -- not to stay frozen and immobile in the face of needs of others around us. Are you a be in the moment, a what s-happening-now person? Then Jesus may be asking you to anchor yourself more solidly with wisdom from the past which we can access in scriptures. He may be asking you to live out a hope that goes beyond your own life where you may not be immediately rewarded with a visible outcome. He may be asking you to think about the limits of spontaneity. Is it hard for you to seriously study to understand the hard-earned wisdom of the faithful who lived before us? Are you lacking in self-discipline to plan for future goals that will enhance God s kingdom? Are you a live for the future person? Then Jesus may be asking you to become more fully attentive and aware of all that is going on around you right now, to become
more spontaneous and sensitive to the needs that you see right now not to be the rich man who was unable to see and thus to ignore Lazarus during their lifetimes on earth as we considered last week. Are you one who remains skeptical, a doubting Thomas as to the necessity of faith? Are you more trusting of what is empirical, avoidant of taking risk, or disparaging of hope for what cannot be seen or maybe not even realized? Your first step may be to acknowledge your limitations and to recognize that you don t have to know everything. You don t, as Mother Theresa said, have to achieve certainty before making a commitment of hope, a hope that chooses which hope among various forms of hope will be decisive for you. We can only act on what is right in front of us, and we must step out and risk in this present moment that we are given. Then, and only then, will the next step become apparent to us. And only after taking this first step toward faith will our awareness enlarge. Our fathers used their courage trudging through wasteland, facing all its threats and misery. O God, give us courage to tread the too dry land of the desert days of our lives. Abraham kept his eye on your promise. Offspring as many as the stars. And he lifted the sword to kill his only son. O God, you saw his trust and you halted him. Help us keep our eyes on you, hang on tight to your promises. We do trust.
we believe. Help our unbelief. Lord, you tell us to wait for your return. Help us watch for you. Let us greet you in the Eucharist. And look for you in the ones we love, in strangers that we meet, and in everyone in need. Let us find you in our work, in books we read and in our sleep. We ll watch for you in our laughter and our tears, within the deep insides of everything, in the dusk, and in the dark of night. Knock, and please come right in. Prayers only. Copyright 2013, Anne M. Osdieck. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.